West Coast Bound

I’m currently sitting in an airport. I been up since 4 AM and currently on my first cup of coffee. This day could potentially be the longest one ever, but I don’t care; I’m West Coast bound.

Despite a semester traveling throughout Europe during my sophomore year at school, my travels in the United States have been limited to the East Coast. Except for one memorable trip to Chicago, I haven’t explored my own country very far. Today that changes. In less than thirty minutes I will be on a plane to Las Vegas.

Sometimes the best decisions are the ones made spontaneously. Feeling a strong desire for an escape, this past May, I started paying more attention to my weekly travel deal emails. One week a particular deal caught my eye: roundtrip airfare and three-night stay in Las Vegas. Having put a West Coast Visit on my 2014 Bucket List, I shot an email to a friend with the similar subject line, “Vegas?”. The response was almost immediate: “When?!”

So the “when” is now. My overpacked bag is checked and I’m sitting in the terminal with my laptop counting down the minutes to takeoff. The five-hour flight will have me in Vegas by 9:30 AM and down by the strip before 11 AM. On the itinerary: eating, poolside lounging and making friends with strangers. It’s a much-needed period of relaxation with the promise of lots of adventure and stories.

Even if this trip keeps me from running and means I’m running Saturday’s 18-mile SLR jet lagged, it will be worth. They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I know I won’t be able to keep all of it a secret.

Readying for Iced Coffee Weather

When I left Florida yesterday afternoon, it was 75 degrees in Orlando. According to this Website, the warm, comfortable air temperatures made it ideal iced coffee weather.

When I arrived in D.C. last night, it was a cool, jacket-required 48 degrees —definitely not iced coffee weather.

A Well-Rounded Diet

I have to admit: going into this week I anticipated that my diet would be on carb-overload. Staying with my Italian relatives, I figured that most of my meals would consist of oversized portions of bread and pasta. Although I have nothing against these food items, especially since I shun the pasta bar at the school dining hall and D.C.’s Italian food scene is nothing like that grandma used to make, a part of me was relieved to see some diversity in my diet during my first few days of vacation.

Like most foodies, I go through periods of food obsessions, and right now my obsession is grapefruit. In the drawer of my aunt’s freezer is nearly half a dozen plump grapefruit waiting to be segmented and juiced. For the past few days, my morning meal has been as simple as cutting up the citrus, sprinkling with sugar and finished with a couple of slices of jam-slathered toast. Even if grapefruit has a reputation as a diet food, I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying it all the time.

A Vacation Long Overdue

Of late, it seems that any break on the academic calendar could not come soon enough. Last winter, I had five papers and one sit-down exam standing between me and winter break, and this past week I had a to-do with countless things tasks and lots of added stresses making me extremely anxious for a vacation.

So Long Since Last We Met

“It’s been so long since last we met…”

While some readers might not get the reference in the opening sentence, I thought that the Georgetown’s Fight Song fit well in these circumstances. Yes, readers, it has been a very long time since last we met.

In my last post, nearly a month and a half ago, I wrote about my gelatin-wrecked vegetarian diet and my resolution to start anew. Since that time much has happened.

Like the fall semester, the spring term has been equally, if not more, busy. Once again taking a full courseload, I am also working my job at school, commuting to an internship and juggling various extracurricular activities. In light of this, I have come to the realization that 24 hours in a day are just not enough. WIth so much on plate, my resolution for weekly blogging became like the decadent dessert calling my name on the counter. Unfortunately, with so much else weighing me down, giving in to the temptation of blogging would have only put me behind on the things I actually needed to do.

Resolved: 2012

I am very much a list person. To-do lists, shopping lists, bucket lists; you name it, I list it. Oftentimes in the mornings I will sit down with a pen and notebook and make lists of all the things I aim to accomplish during the day. Other times, I will write up lists of things I need to remember. I credit this somewhat obsessive, hyper organized habit to my gold personality.

Wait, what? Gold? What does that mean? Let me explain.

2011: A Year in Review

Dear readers,

Are you there?  It’s me, Bethany.

I know it has been nearly five months since I sat down to blog, and there really is no excuse for it. These past five months have been some of the most challenging, amazing and rewarding times in my life, but writing that does little to relieve the fact that I did not share these experiences. Although I did contribute to the food blogging world with my posts for Small Kitchen College, I failed to keep up-to-date on my own personal blog. This failure is something I resolve to change in 2012.

No Ferragosto for Me

Can someone please tell me where the time went?

It seems like only yesterday the calendar turned to the year 2011, and then suddenly I woke up on Monday morning to the realization that it was August 1^st. Surely the summer cannot be almost over?

The Magnificence of the Capital

We all know I like to drop in on other people’s conversations to listen in on some aspect of their lives. While some exchanges are more interesting than others, a recent conversation overheard at a D.C. café made me pause and take notice.

After visiting one of the city’s museums, I stopped into a nearby bakery for an afternoon pick-me-up. As I took a seat in one of the chairs outside, I overheard the foreign accents of three girls at a table nearby. Although I could not identify their nationality, the subject of their conversation made it clear that they were foreign tourists visiting our nation’s capital.

NJSLC: Empowering Millenials to Set the World on Fire

Yesterday I gushed about the city of Chicago and how much I loved my time in the Midwest. Yet amidst writing about the paintings at the Art Institute and my exploration of Millennium Park, I failed to mention any details about the reason I was in the city in the first place.

As a student leader at Georgetown, I was invited earlier this spring to be a university delegate at the National Jesuit Student Leadership Conference. Started in 1997 at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, the conference invites students from the nation’s 28 Jesuit institutions in an effort to promote student leadership at each school. Originally the conference focused on improving leadership in student government, but it has since grown to welcome leaders from across university communities.